Monitoring and administration of data networks and the separate nodes of the data networks are typically performed by a combination of hardware and software components referred to as a network management system (NMS).
Installation and removal of data network nodes (sometimes referred to as “devices”) as well as creation, manipulation or deletion of services in the data network require the NMS to enable reconfiguration of the network nodes.
Monitoring what configuration changes should be made and what configuration changes have been made to the data network nodes of the network is not a trivial task. Nor is it a trivial task to implement the desired configuration of the data network nodes in an efficient manner.
One known way of reconfiguring a network node is to connect and logon to the network node, and to manually enter CLI (command line interface) commands on the integrated command-line interface of the node. However, this process of “locally” reconfiguring network nodes using CLI commands is very time consuming, in particular if the network comprises a large number of network nodes and/or if many configuration parameters are to be changed.
Another and more automated way that allows “remote” reconfiguration of network nodes is to use scripting. However, different nodes speak different languages due to differences in their command-line interfaces. Therefore, the configuration parameters must be embedded in scripts that are individually adapted to the different network nodes in order for the network nodes to understand what configuration changes are to be made. Creating the node-specific scripts, or a script that is interpretable by all nodes of the network, is also a very time consuming process.
There is software for automatic generation of reconfiguration scripts which eliminates the time consuming process of manual scripting. However, such software is developed to support reconfiguration of specific types of network nodes, e.g. a specific router from a specific manufacturer, and cannot be used to generate reconfiguration scripts which are interpretable by all data network nodes normally comprised in larger data networks.
There is user interfaces, such as web based user interfaces, for network devices and network services. However, such user interfaces are typically manually configured based on a specific setup of network and associated services. This means that there is a very long lag time between the time changes in the network or associated services is implemented and time where such changes is accounted for and appropriately reflected by the user interface. This is especially problematic for large scale networks.
Yet another problem associated with known solutions for providing user interfaces for network management is that since networks of today typically is quite complex naming conventions of properties of the network/service may differ meaning that one and the same property may be named differently.
Thus, changes in the user interface may result in unintended graphical representations of one or more device/services or elements thereof.
Thus, there is a desire to facilitate the process related to monitoring, configuration, and testing, of network devices and network services such that the process efficiently can be tailored to suit needs/requirements of different network operators and/or network service providers.